(from the archives)
COMPULSION by Meyer Levin
(Review by Deb)
Meyer
Levin's COMPULSION is a lightly-fictionalized account of the
sensational Leopold and Loeb murder case that gripped the nation in the
mid-1920s. Meyer's
fictionalization (published in 1956) is very light indeed, with much of
the dialog being taken verbatim from transcripts of police records and
court testimony. Even so, the
novel is more than just a retelling of a senseless and horrific crime,
it is a perceptive study of what the French call a folie-a-deux,
wherein two people who are utterly toxic for each other are
none-the-less hopelessly attracted to each other and, in the thrall of
that attraction, commit acts that
neither would necessarily have done without the dark-mirror image of
the other goading them on.
In
Levin's book, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb become Judd Steiner and
Artie Strauss, neighbors in Chicago's wealthy and close-knit
German-Jewish community. (There's a small but telling detail when Judd
informs his aunt that he's going out with a girl named Ruth Goldenberg
and his aunt sighs, "Oh, Russian-Jewish I suppose.") Both men were child prodigies who had graduated from university by the time they were 18 years old. As
the book begins, both of them are still in their teens (as is Sid
Silver, a newspaperman who narrates part of the book and plays a pivotal
role in uncovering some of the evidence). Adopting
the guise of
Nietzschean "supermen" who do not need to follow the laws applicable to
average beings, Steiner and Strauss plan the "perfect murder." They eventually kidnap a randomly-selected neighborhood boy on his way home from school. They
kill the boy, pour acid on the corpse, hide the body in a drainage
ditch, and then put into motion an elaborate red-herring of a
kidnapping-ransom plot.
This perfect murder rapidly unravels, starting with the victim's body being quickly discovered and identified. Then damning evidence stacks up against the men: Steiner's
glasses--traced to him by their unique hinge mechanism--are found
beside the victim, there is blood on the back seat of a car the men have
rented, papers typed on Steiner's discarded typewriter match the typing
on the bogus ransom notes, and Strauss's attempts to inject himself
into the investigation (in order to discover how much the press and
police actually know) backfire spectacularly. Their
alibis in shreds, the men confess to the crime, each blaming
the other for striking the fatal blow (although, as Sid Silver points
out, in that regard, one of them had to be telling the truth).
Considering
that the book was written in the 1950s about a crime in the 1920s, one
aspect that I found surprising (and rather refreshing) was its refusal
to take the "easy" way out and blame the men's actions on the fact that
they were closeted lovers, although society at the time certainly did,
blaming all manner of depraved behavior on homosexuality. However,
narrator Sid Silver is puzzled by how much stress the authorities place
on the men's relationship and asks of it, "In all the history of human
behaviour, of the sick and ugly and distorted and careless and sportive
and mistaken things that humans did, was this so much more?"
In
fact, Levin does not present the men as sexually "set," but rather most
likely bisexual, with Judd being more interested in dominance and
submission rather than the gender of his partner, and Artie using his
good looks, affable facade, and charisma to attract both men and women. I
was also surprised at the frankness of the book, given the time it was
written--Judd's dark fantasies, especially involving rape, are quite
explicit. Levin's book makes us
feel if not sympathy then at least some understanding, particularly for
the intense and brooding Judd whose infatuation with the manipulative
and self-centered Artie is as inexplicable as its dreadful outcome is
inevitable.
But I've only covered the first half of the book. The
second half, which centers on the mens' trial, is interesting, although
it drags in places due to pages of legal arguments and long-winded
explanations of Freudian psychology with which we are now completely
familiar. In order to avoid a
jury trial and a sure death penalty, Steiner and Strauss plead guilty in
the hopes that arguing before a judge might result in a life, rather
than a death, sentence. Aging
lawyer Jonathan Wilk (a fictionalized Clarence Darrow) mounts a
brilliant legal defense at their sentencing hearing that saves the men
from execution, although they
both receive sentences of “Life plus 99 years.” And,
other than a brief coda, there the book abruptly ends, with Steiner and
Straus entering prison and fading from public memory.
But
this abruptness works in the book's favor by indicating that there will
be other events and other atrocities that will come to overshadow the
"crime of the century." First of
all, the rise of "some gangster named Al Capone" (as he is described in
an offhand remark by one of Sid's colleagues about a gangland shooting)
and the associated violence of Prohibition. And
then the actual "crime of the century"--the Nazi atrocities of World
War II and everything the world was to learn about the "Superman" ideal
and where it leads.
Meyer
Levin wrote this book in part to assist Nathan Leopold in his attempt
to be granted parole, which finally happened in 1958. Leopold moved to
Puerto Rico, married, worked as an x-ray technician, and died in 1971. Richard
Loeb was not so fortunate: In 1936, he was stabbed multiple times by a
fellow inmate who claimed Loeb had made sexual advances toward him. Although
the story was easily discounted, especially since Loeb was covered with
defensive wounds and the inmate who killed him was unscathed, no
charges were ever filed in his death.
